At present, in a convergence billing system (CBS, Convergence Billing System) and an online charging system (OCS, Online Charge System), there exist abundant requirements for services, and a software is upgraded frequently. As shown in FIG. 1, the OCS/CBS system consists of a unified access platform, a charging engine and a data center, wherein the data center includes a physical data center, a memory data center, a data cache center and the like. A service control point (SCP, Service Control Point) interacts with the unified access platform of the OCS/CBS system through a diameter credit-control (DCC, Diameter Credit-Control) message interface.
An Operator is quite sensitive to service interruption time caused by upgrade, and proposes specific indexes. However, since the service interruption time is comprehensively determined by various objective factors such as a changed item during upgrade, skills of operating personnel, environment readiness and the like. At present, service is normally interrupted for several hours and still for tens of minutes even under an ideal condition.
At present, when the OCS/CBS system is upgraded (for example, upgrade of an application program, upgrade of a data center, etc.), service is generally processed by adopting a bypass technology, wherein the bypass technology refers to that a front-end functional module of a functional module performs corresponding processing in accordance with a bypass requirement in the case that the functional module is disabled. FIG. 2 shows a schematic view of processing service by employing the bypass technology when the OCS/CBS system is upgrading. Before the OCS/CBS system is upgraded, when an SCP receives an online charging requirement, the SCP sends a DCC message to the unified access platform of the OCS/CBS system, and the charging engine performs charging according to the DCC message received by the unified access platform, wherein both the unified access platform and the charging engine can access the data center. When the OCS/CBS system is upgrading and the SCP receives an online charging requirement, the SCP sends a DCC message to the unified access platform of the OCS/CBS system. Since the OCS/CBS system is in the process of upgrading, the unified access platform and the charging engine of the OCS/CBS system stop running, and service processing is interrupted. Consequently, the unified access platform can not receive the DCC message sent by the SCP. When the SCP receives a timeout message returned by the OCS/CBS system, and if a current service is a voice call, the SCP performs bypass processing and records call information after the call is ended. After the upgrade is complete, the OCS/CBS system recovers normal operation. The OCS/CBS system collects the call information recorded by the SCP and performs charging by means of offline charging according to the call information.
The aforementioned solution may ensure that the upgrade of the OCS/CBS system is not perceivable by a user. However, since the SCP bypasses all calls in the aforementioned solution, a calling user can still make a call when current balance thereof is insufficient to pay for this call service. It is thus can be seen that the aforementioned solution has an arrearage risk for an operator, and more particularly, has a technical vulnerability of malicious arrearage. For example, when balance of a user is 0.1 yuan, which is insufficient to make an international call, a system will reject the user to make an international call during normal online charging, while in this solution, the SCP will bypass the international call when the OCS/CBS system is upgrading. On the other hand, the aforementioned solution requires a front-end network element (such as the SCP, a Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN, Gateway GPRS Support Node) and the like) of the OCS/CBS system to have bypass capability. If it is required that all network elements support bypass capability, modification and upgrade cost is quite high and it is not bearable by every operator and device manufacturer.